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Movies | Written by Andrew Pollard 04/06/2015

Warner Brothers Moving Forward with MEG

After years of waiting, it looks as if MEG is finally heading to the big screen.

Steve Alten’s MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror was released in 1997 and has spawned several follow-ups, with the action focussing on the 80-foot megalodon and the tale often described as “Jurassic Park with a shark” as the California coast is terrorised by this ancient threat.

A movie adaptation of MEG has been in development seemingly ever since the first book hit shelves, and at the last count The Manchurian Candidate’s Dean Georgaris had penned the most recent draft for Warner Brothers. Colin Wilson and Belle Avery have been on board for a while in a producing capacity, and it’s now believed that Warners has intensified their search for a director as they look to make MEG a priority.

Disney initially picked up the rights to a MEG adaptation back in ’97 for a sum of around $1 million, although were put off initially moving ahead with the film for fear of having to go up against 1999’s Deep Blue Sea. After various names came and went on the project, including Guillermo del Toro even taking a look at it, the film was set for a 2006 release with an $80 million budget. Obviously that didn’t happen, and again the project slipped into the murky depths of development hell before the rights reverted back to Steve Alten in 2007. And here we are, with Warner Brothers now owning the cinematic rights to MEG.

It’s highly likely that Warners has noticed the positive response to the giant underwater beast shown in the Jurassic World trailers, and the prospect of a big budget shark movie (even if it’s a megalodon) is a hugely appealing one to us here at STARBURST and it’ll be a nice change of pace to see something different than tripe like Two-Headed Shark Attack, Jersey Shore Shark Attack and Sand Sharks.